From the bestselling author of Destiny of the Republic, this thrilling biographical account of the life and legacy of Wintson Churchill is a "nail-biter and top-notch character study rolled into one" (The New York Times). At the age of twenty-four, Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England. He arrived in South Africa in 1899, valet and crates of vintage wine in tow, to cover the brutal colonial war the British were fighting with Boer rebels and jumpstart his political career. But just two weeks later, Churchill was taken prisoner. Remarkably, he pulled off a daring escape—traversing hundreds of miles of enemy territory, alone, with nothing but a crumpled wad of cash, four slabs of chocolate, and his wits to guide him. Bestselling author Candice Millard spins an epic story of bravery, savagery, and chance encounters with a cast of historical characters—including Rudyard Kipling, Lord Kitchener, and Mohandas Gandhi—with whom Churchill would later share the world stage. But Hero of the Empire is more than an extraordinary adventure story, for the lessons Churchill took from the Boer War would profoundly affect twentieth century history.
This thesis will examine how Churchill’s experience in the Boer War affected his career and leadership style. Initial research revealed that Churchill planned to make some major life decisions in 1899 the year he participated in The Boer War. Fate and other variables such as his financial independence and celebrity status enabled rapid realization of his goals to attain political office in the British government. Research indicated that Churchill’s experience while a Boer prisoner of war (POW) and his subsequent escape proved to be an especially formative experience for him professionally. In addition, his POW experience taught him the Boer perspective of the conflict, which developed his leadership and personality. Secondary questions answered are: How did his experience as a POW affect him? What did his experiences in Cuba, India, and Sudan teach him? What were Churchill’s motivations during his time in the British Army? Using a chronological approach throughout this paper will provide the reader with the most logical and easiest method of answering these questions.
As a young man Winston Churchill set out to become a hero, to make a name for himself in the public eye as a soldier and so make possible a life of politics and statesmanship. There were many chances to fail and many close calls in the face of sword, spear and bullet along the way. Yet Churchill survived and succeeded – an early measure of his courage and stubborn will that the world would come to know so well in the Second World War. This is the first full-length, fully-researched biography of Churchill's colourful military career. Using an unrivalled range of sources, and with previously unpublished photographs, and detailed maps by Sir Martin Gilbert, it brings to life Churchill's motives, abilities, experiences, successes and failures, and his unswerving sense of destiny as an officer in the British Army. The result is a story to echo the man himself – rich in action, courage, charismatic self-belief, patriotism and humour. Making extensive use of the contemporary accounts of Churchill and his fellow soldiers and archival documents from three continents, illustrated with many maps and previously unpublished photographs, Douglas S. Russell vividly brings to life the military career of the vigorous young officer of hussars who later became the greatest Briton of the twentieth century. From Sandhurst to the mountainous North-West Frontier of India, to the charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, from the South African veldt to the deadly trench warfare of the Great War, the author – whom Sir Martin Gilbert calls 'a keen portraitist' – tells the gripping story of Churchill's army life with careful attention to historical detail and all the drama that the real life adventures of his subject deserve.
A vivid, personal account of the conditions under which the Boer War was fought, this volume contains dispatches the future statesman wrote in 1899 and 1900 as a newspaper correspondent.
A New York Times bestseller! A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike. Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then they acted on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles, and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini "men we could do business with," if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom—that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940's to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks's masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin. Churchill and Orwell is a perfect gift for the holidays!
“A richly textured and deeply moving portrait of greatness” (Los Angeles Times). In this masterful book, prize-winning historian and authorized Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert weaves together the research from his eight-volume biography of the elder statesman into one single volume, and includes new information unavailable at the time of the original work’s publication. Spanning Churchill’s youth, education, and early military career, his journalistic work, and the arc of his political leadership, Churchill: A Life details the great man’s indelible contribution to Britain’s foreign policy and internal social reform. With eyewitness accounts and interviews with Churchill’s contemporaries, including friends, family members, and career adversaries, it provides a revealing picture of the personal life, character, ambition, and drive of one of the world’s most remarkable leaders. “A full and rounded examination of Churchill’s life, both in its personal and political aspects . . . Gilbert describes the painful decade of Churchill’s political exile (1929–1939) and shows how it strengthened him and prepared him for his role in the ‘hour of supreme crisis’ as Britain’s wartime leader. A lucid, comprehensive and authoritative life of the man considered by many to have been the outstanding public figure of the 20th century.” —Publishers Weekly “Mr. Gilbert’s job was to bring alive before his readers a man of extraordinary genius and scarcely less extraordinary destiny. He has done so triumphantly.” —The New York Times Book Review
'I would choose this account over and above the rest. It is a fabulous book: full of perceptive insight that conveys all the tragedy, triumph, humour and intense drama of Churchill's time as wartime leader; and it is incredibly moving as a result' James Holland, Literary Review
This memoir was first published in 1930 and describes the author's school days, his time in the Army, his experiences as a war correspondent and his first years as a member of Parliament.
Warrior and writer, genius and crank, rider in the British cavalry’s last great charge and inventor of the tank—Winston Churchill led Britain to fight alone against Nazi Germany in the fateful year of 1940 and set the standard for leading a democracy at war. Like no other portrait of its famous subject, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is a dazzling display of facts more improbable than fiction, and an investigation of the contradictions and complexities that haunt biography. Gretchen Craft Rubin gives readers, in a single volume, the kind of rounded view usually gained only by reading dozens of conventional biographies. With penetrating insight and vivid anecdotes, Rubin makes Churchill accessible and meaningful to twenty-first-century readers with forty contrasting views of the man: he was an alcoholic, he was not; he was an anachronism, he was a visionary; he was a racist, he was a humanitarian; he was the most quotable man in the history of the English language, he was a bore. In crisp, energetic language, Rubin creates a new form for presenting a great figure of history—and brings to full realization the depiction of a man too fabulous for any novelist to construct, too complicated for even the longest narrative to describe, and too valuable ever to be forgotten.
When Winston Churchill was a boy of sixteen, he already had a vision for his purpose in life. “This country will be subjected somehow to a tremendous invasion . . . I shall be in command of the defences of London . . . it will fall to me to save the Capital, to save the Empire.” It was a most unlikely prediction. Perceived as a failure for much of his life, Churchill was the last person anyone would have expected to rise to national prominence as prime minister and influence the fate of the world during World War II. But Churchill persevered, on a mission to achieve his purpose. God and Churchill tells the remarkable story of how one man, armed with belief in his divine destiny, embarked on a course to save Christian civilization when Adolf Hitler and the forces of evil stood opposed. It traces the personal, political, and spiritual path of one of history’s greatest leaders and offers hope for our own violent and troubled times. More than a spiritual biography, God and Churchill is also a deeply personal quest. Written by Jonathan Sandys (Churchill’s great-grandson) and former White House staffer Wallace Henley, God and Churchill explores Sandys’ intense search to discover his great-grandfather—and how it changed his own destiny forever.
